Back Bay Blues

by Peter Colt

  “God damn, Red . . . what the fuck happened to you? You look like you have been to the wars.” Chris didn’t look anything like the young Green Beret medic I had picked up in Da Nang years ago. His nose had been broken a couple of times. His hands were calloused and had grease imbedded in them that spoke of lots of time working on engines.

  “My car got blown up a couple of nights ago.... I was standing too close to it.”

  “That explains your face. Did it do your ribs, too?” Chris had been a good medic. He knew his shit and had seen a lot. While Tony and I had gone into Recon, Chris felt he was doing God’s work as the team medic for a Mike force. He would tend to the team, their hundreds of Montagnards, their families, etc. He had rotated out after a couple of years. I had heard rumors of working for the Company in other parts of Asia, being a hired soldier in Rhodesia and Angola. Then San Francisco. We had kept in touch, sometimes letters, sometimes drunken phone calls where we told war stories and cried over our dead comrades. We each felt that if we had stayed with Tony, he would have lived. It was part of the war freight that we carried. The war guilt that would never leave, but at least we could share it with each other.

  “I thought you gave that shit up when you started being a low-rent version of Philip Marlowe.”

  “Me too. What the fuck are you, one of the Village People?” He looked at me for a moment, then laughed.

  “Something like that, ya weirdo. Come on, let’s go get a drink and catch up. I was kind of shocked when you called and said you were coming out here.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t mean to impose, but I need someone who knows the lay of the land.”

  “Shit, brother, I am just glad you are here, and we can catch up.” His Alabama twang had softened, and his voice wasn’t sad exactly, but he had aged.

  “It’s been too long.”

  We started walking out of the terminal. Nice, respectable people looked at us and moved out of our path. The two cops by the door eyeballed us. It was the look that I used to give people who I knew were trouble. It was a look that made the hand you held your nightstick with itch. Cops are like dogs: friendly and nice enough, but violence, swift and sure, was just below the surface. Had I gone that far through the looking glass that cops looked at me like I was trouble?

  We walked out to the sidewalk. There was a Harley Davidson in front of us. I looked at Chris and said, “Please tell me that isn’t yours?”

  “What, you don’t want to ride, bitch?”

  “Given my luck lately, I think there aren’t many faster ways to get killed.” Chris laughed and pointed to an older beat-up Ford pickup. It had been green once and was a straight bed, the kind where the wheel wells are prominently displayed on the sides. We climbed in and he started us toward the city proper.

  Chapter 16

  The drive in from SFO, the call sign for the airport, was fairly uneventful. It was funny to me that in California they referred to the airports not by name but by call sign: LAX, SFO, etc. The traffic was like Boston’s at that time of night, early evening, just after work. We bumper-to-bumpered our way to Chris’s apartment in the Richmond district. We rode up and down hills like roller coasters. I could see why so many movies loved to film car chases in the dramatic scenery. I was taken by the fact that the Spanish influence was still evident even though it had been a couple hundred years or more. It was hard for me to reconcile palm trees and the raw chill of the March night in San Francisco.

  Chris’s apartment was actually a small stand-alone building. It was wedged between an all-night laundromat and a run-down duplex. He parked in the laundromat’s parking lot and we walked over to a gate made of eight-foot-high spiked metal bars. Chris unlocked it, and we were in a narrow alley between his apartment and the duplex. His front door was twenty feet down the alley, and twenty feet beyond that was a small yard fenced in by a stockade fence.

  He let us into the apartment, which turned out to be a large room that made up the kitchen, dining area, and living room. It was probably two-thirds of the structure and had a white tile floor and white-faced cabinets. To the left there were two doors, each close to an exterior wall, each with three steps up. One set of steps led to the bedroom and one led to the bathroom. Opposite that on the other end of the apartment was a door leading out to a small patio. The apartment was spartan in its decoration and I had the feeling that Chris could leave it at a moment’s notice.

  I dropped my bag next to the couch, where I would be sleeping. Chris went to the refrigerator and pulled open the door.

  “You want a beer, Red?”

  “I sure do.” He handed me something that definitely was not Lowenbrau. The bottle was brown and squat. The label had a picture of a blue ship’s anchor centered on it that read, “Anchor Steam.” It was cold and had more body and more flavor than the beers I was used to.

  “Do you like it? They brew it here in San Francisco.”

  “It’s very good.” And it was.

  “Are you hungry?” Chris, the biker with the smashed nose, former medic, now turned the perfect host.

  “I can eat.” That was an understatement. The food on the plane had been unappetizing.

  “I made a red pepper and shrimp risotto.”

  “That sounds great.” I had known Chris as a top-notch medic, a Green Beret, and an all-around badass. Now he was also a gourmet cook. He sautéed spinach, dusting it with a bit of nutmeg and black pepper. He then got out two bowls and served out the risotto. It was red, like pasta sauce after someone has poured in a bit of heavy cream. The shrimp were in it, and Chris had dusted it with bonito flakes. The effect was awesome and a little unsettling. As the heat rose from the rice, the bonito flakes wiggled and waved. At first, it reminded me of insects, but then I tasted it, and it was fantastic. He put the spinach on the side of each bowl. Chris had uncorked a red wine to go with it.

  “It’s a ’79 Brunello di Montalcino. It was a good year. Not a great year, but a good year. It should stand up nicely to the shrimp and bonito.” Chris was right; it did. The shrimp were fresh and perfectly cooked.

  The food was excellent, and we spent some time eating without saying much. After the meal was done, we began to catch up. Other than a drunken night in Boston after Chris had rotated home, we hadn’t seen each other since we were in-country. I told him about my brief stint as a cop and then some stories of life as a private detective, mostly amusing tales about infidelity and insurance fraud. He told me about being a mercenary in Rhodesia and Angola.

  “What are you doing now?”

  “For a living?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Honestly, Red?”

  “Sure, it isn’t like I’m in a place to judge anyone.” I wasn’t and certainly not Chris.

  “I run with a bunch of guys. Sometimes they need someone who can patch up a wound without calling the cops. I’m good at patching people up. “

  “Probably doesn’t hurt that you know a bit about guns and never shied away from a fight in your life.” He hadn’t. I had watched Chris in more than a few bar fights. It was impressive.

  “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

  “So, you’re in a bike gang?”

  “No, I’m not in it.... I’m not a joiner. Not since Vietnam. No, I just hang around, kind of like a consultant. They pay pretty well, I get to spend time on my Hog, and I wasn’t cut out to be a cop.”

  “Hey, man, like I said, it isn’t for me to judge. Right or wrong, you paid your dues in Vietnam. You paid early and in full.”

  “We sure did.” He held out his beer and we toasted.

  “Red, why are you here, all bruised, beat up, and blown up?”

  “What if I told you that I was chasing a rumor, a hint, a suggestion, a fairy tale about some gold? Gold that doesn’t really belong to anyone anymore.” He stopped drinking and put the beer bottle down on the table.

  “Gold. Like as in Miner Forty-Niner? What is it, old Nazi gold, the stuff they disappeared with forty years ago?”

  “No. T
his isn’t that, or that old. This is from South Vietnam, their national treasury. Gold bars taken out on a ship as Saigon was falling. A ship that is currently not very far from here.”

  “Okay, but why would it still be on the ship?”

  “Well, I’m not sure it is. I think it is because gold is heavy and the people who pulled it out of Vietnam may not have had any way of disposing of it without drawing a lot of attention to themselves. They didn’t have an organization or resources. Maybe they had some contacts in the CIA and the army. Maybe they didn’t trust anyone. When Saigon fell, the Swiss barred their banks from taking any gold bullion from Vietnam or Cambodia. It is possible that they left it on a ship, in a safe place waiting for the time to be right to start a counterrevolution. A ship that their good friend Uncle Sugar would provide free maintenance and security for.”

  “Why not take it to a bank?” Chris asked.

  “I think if they tried to dispose of it normally, the communists might be able to make a claim on it.”

  “Why not just hide it someplace like Fort Knox?” He was asking the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.

  “Because the ship they have to move things on and off of the ship for maintenance reasons. People can come and go. Boats can pull up alongside and heavy cargo can be off loaded. I imagine there is a lot of paperwork involved with anything at Ft. Knox but not so much with the Mothball Fleet.”

  “The Mothball Fleet?”

  “Yep. The ship’s last location from ’75 till now is in Suisun Bay.” I told him about Thuy, the murders in Boston and Quincy, as well as our trip to Virginia. I told him about Colonel Tran and his flunkies.

  “They beat you up, blew up your car, and booby-trapped your office?” Chris was shaking his head.

  “Yep.”

  “All because of some gold?”

  “Well, in their defense, it might be a shitload of gold. That, and the Committee to Restore the Republic of Vietnam might feel that I had information about some of their dirty deeds.”

  “How dirty?” Chris had the rare habit of looking at you when talking to you. Not just glancing, but looking at you with the full force of his gaze.

  “Shaking down Vietnamese business owners, intimidating Vietnamese journalists, murdering them . . . little things like that that I find very un-American.” It was all bad, but murdering a journalist seemed particularly far from American ideals.

  “And the bastards blew up your car . . . with your girl in it.”

  “Yeah, that too. Though I don’t know how much she was my girl.... It isn’t like we had a relationship. I was an assignment to her.” I hadn’t been in love with her or anything but I didn’t like just being an assignment.

  “It couldn’t have been just that for her. She didn’t kill you. She knew that going back to the land of Uncle Ho as a failure probably would land her in a reeducation camp or dead.” That was the funny thing about Chris—for a guy who was a devout Southern Baptist when I met him, he had slowly turned into something else. He had mellowed, had a drink or two and stopped judging people through the lens of his church.

  “Thank you. Maybe it is easier to think of it like it was just business. On the other hand, I liked her, however little I knew her.” It wasn’t something that I had wanted to think about. It was easier to deal with her death if she was an agent doing her job. It was easier if I could be more upset about the car than the person. It had been such an unnecessary waste of life. She had been young and vital. In the quiet moments in bed she reminded me of Leslie or more accurately the way I felt when I was with Leslie. It wasn’t the same but it was a hint of what was out there. Maybe I just wanted that feeling back again. It could never happen but that didn’t mean Thuy should have been killed.

  “What are you going to get to replace the Karmann Ghia?” Chris was a gearhead through and through.

  “I already got it. An older, well-maintained Ford Maverick, 302.” Chris whistled.

  “That is a lot of car for a city boy like you, Red.” Chris used to regale us with tales of racing his friends down the red clay back roads of rural Alabama. He had lived outside of Anniston, Alabama, not far from the army base.

  “Thanks, you aren’t exactly country anymore, making fancy risotto and drinking good wine. Educating me about the difference between a good and great year in Tuscany.” He shrugged his shoulders.

  “You know us old Special Forces NCOs, we are not just content to exist, we must strive to learn, to grow, and to improve.” He was quoting an instructor from the Q Course that was infamously tough, not the type to scream and yell but rather to have very high standards, standards that you either met or, more likely, you didn’t, and you were out.

  “You young Special Forces NCOs, y’all need to learn to expand your minds. You need to understand everything from geopolitics to medicine, to history, to small unit tactics and ballistics. You all aren’t just a bunch of leg NCOs who only need to know just what they need to know.” We both laughed. The funny thing was that the master sergeant we were imitating was right. SF NCOs had to know and do more—that was why it was so elite. A Special Forces sergeant would lead the same amount of men that a captain in the infantry would end up leading, except that we had to do it in a foreign language, be aware of the geopolitical implications of every mission, as well as be culturally attuned to the taboos of the men we were leading. It was heady stuff.

  That was why it had been a colossal waste to lose so many in Vietnam. There had been nothing wrong with fighting and dying bravely, as many of us had. It was just that they, the boys in Washington in their famous buildings with famous names, had squandered a precious, precious resource. They had asked us to make horrible sacrifices for a war that they were unwilling and eventually unable to win. In the end, for what? Chris’s voice broke through my bitter reverie.

  “Red, what’s your plan?”

  “What makes you think I have a plan?” I asked innocently.

  “Red, I was in the jungle with you. You may not have liked to admit it, but when you were running Recon, you had a plan for everything. You had plans and contingency plans and you were able to adapt and shift gears fast. Shit, you probably don’t brush your teeth without a plan.” After Tony had been killed, Chris came to Recon. He had been good at it. Better than me, if I was being honest. If I planned and tried to figure out every angle, he seemed to glide effortlessly from one situation to the next. He was able to simply react and react until he was out of a bad situation.

  “I was thinking that if you had the time and could put up with me for a few days I might set up a Recon. I want to check out the Mothball Fleet from the shore and then figure out the best way to get onboard the Adams. Once on board, I want to look around and see if there is a pile of gold sitting around.”

  “And if there is? What, are you gonna steal it? You don’t strike me as the type to steal.”

  “I don’t know. Part of me would love to be rich, but mostly I don’t like how these assholes treat people. I want to hurt them, maybe expose them. I don’t know. They blew up my car, and I really liked that car.”

  “Okay, I get it. I can help you out for a few days. My work is, uh, unstructured.”

  “Cool. I figure we need to do a map Recon, then drive out and around the bay. Take pictures and look at the area with binoculars. Figure out the method of attack. We have to figure out how to get across the water quietly and onto the ship. Probably take a couple of days to plan.”

  “You packed light, so you will need clothes and stuff, a piece. I assume you are lying low.” Chris was talking out loud but he was planning like any good soldier would—he just did it vocally. We talked about binoculars, boats, and cameras for a good hour or more. At some point in time, my eyes grew heavy, and I kicked off my shoes. I stretched out on the couch and slept. For once it was a deep, dreamless, restful sleep.

  I woke up once. I had a wool blanket thrown over me and could hear Chris snoring in the other room. He had put a holstered .45 on the coffee table by the couc
h. I didn’t have to check and see if it was loaded. I knew Chris. Next to the .45 was a bottle of Anacin and a glass of water. I pulled the blanket close and went back to sleep. It was good to be back among my own people.

  Chapter 17

  The next morning was chilly and damp. It wasn’t misty out; it was San Francisco. Chris had made coffee in a Chemex carafe. The carafe looked like a glass model of a nuclear reactor cooling tower. The coffee sat in a special filter on top, and you poured hot water through it. The whole thing took a long time but was worth it. Chris had ground the coffee that morning. The smell of fresh coffee filled the little house.

  Breakfast was simple: toasted whole wheat bagels, cream cheese, and lox. Chris offered some pickled red onion to go with it. The tartness of the onion was a nice counterpoint to the saltiness of the fish. It was a simple breakfast that worked because somehow the competing flavors managed to complement each other. A second mug of coffee and a hot shower made me forget that I had spent seven hours on an airplane and almost three in airports.

  We went out to Chris’s truck in the parking lot of the laundromat. He walked all the way around it, looking for wires on the ground or telltale signs of tampering. Apparently, my friends on the Committee weren’t the only ones who liked to blow things up. The bikers Chris was affiliated with had rivals. Those rivals liked to use dynamite and blow up cars and clubhouses. Our paranoia checks done, we got in and headed down to the harbor. We nosed around down by a part of the waterfront that didn’t cater much to tourists but to fishing boats and serious boaters.

  We parked and got out. Chris figured we should start at a ship’s chandlery. As we were walking over Chris said, “I wonder how long this will last?”

  “What?”

  “This, all of this,” he said, gesturing at the area around us. “It is only a matter of time before the real estate assholes buy this up, too, turn it into condos and high-rises with water views and restaurants with cutesy names. There won’t be any room left for regular people to work or enjoy the bay.”